The drastic change that occurred in Jewish history during the modern
era is clearly reflected in the different rates of development experienced
by western European and eastern European Jewry. From a broad historical perspective, one may distinguish similar internal and external factors nibbling away at the foundations of traditional society in both regions. The weakening of institutions of feudal government and the
absorption of rationalist ideas accompanying this development eventually reached eastern European lands as well, with the consequential
fundamental change in Jewish society. But the fact that eastern Europe
lagged behind the western part of the Continent led to the emergence
of a gap between the two Jewish groups, which, until the beginning of
the modern era, in the second half of the eighteenth century, might very
well have been considered two wings of one and the same society, that
of Ashkenazic Jewry.

The difference in the rate of change does not negate the similarity
in the substance of the development, as demonstrated by the fact that
the same problems facing the Jews of western Europe eventually came
to trouble their eastern brethren as well. And matters of Sabbath observance, of the kind we are considering, can serve as an example of this
parallelism.

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